Commerce Emperor

Chapter Fifty-Nine: Gilded Shadow

The last battle was upon us.

True to his word, Lord Oboro delivered us the runestones for the Colmar and disguises for our infiltrators. Soraseo, Rubenzo, and Mersie had gone with him to infiltrate the ceremony through the front door, while Chronius had been assigned to help Mirokald attack it from another angle. Neferoa would remain in the capital for the sake of distracting the Knots and in preparation for my backup plan, while Eris distributed our prepared soundstones across the entire Shinkoku Empire. Only the Spy remained unaccounted for, though I had taken steps to identify and support them. I trusted them to pull through in our favor at the right time.

Which left Marika, Beni, Ravengarde, and I to run our airship. We double-checked the provided runestones at my request, confirmed the absence of sabotage—on that front at least—and then set sail into the mist-laden skies.

I found myself in the same situation I’d been in back when we marshaled together to fight Belgoroth: loading runestones into cannons in the artillery room and readying them for battle. Beni and Ravengarde were nowhere near as talkative as Cortaner and Colmar had been, but they worked hard enough to compensate.

“Can you see the way forward?” I asked Marika through the room’s loudspeakers. The world beyond our portholes looked like an impenetrable ocean of mist.

“Barely,” Marika replied, her voice carrying through the rooms. “Seo’s map helps, but the fog is getting thicker by the second. The essence is condensing.”

I could feel it in the air too. Anxiety, fear, doubts… The mist exacerbated and absorbed those emotions before ferrying them back to Mount Kazandu. It was almost suffocating.

Did Daltia intend to temper her wicked Artifact with the terror of men? Wouldn’t the raw desires of the demonic souls caught in her Devil Coins be enough?

Whatever the case, we could expect a welcoming committee once we approached the mountain.

“Beni,” I said with a hand on my fellow Hero’s shoulder; a wise boy whom I had come to consider like a little brother to me. “Demons will soon try to board our ship. Climb inside Ravengarde and don’t come out unless absolutely necessary. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes,” he replied with more bravery than most children his age could manage, his voice hoarse yet steady. “I’ll… do my best.”

“I know you will,” I replied with a smile. “And so does your mother.”

“I do,” Marika said, her voice wavering with anxiety through the loudspeaker. “Beni… promise me that you will stick to repairs and run at the first sign of danger. Uncle Robin will take care of the bad guys.”

Beni bit his lower lip and nodded, though I noticed he didn’t promise anything out loud. Ravengarde opened its back compartment to let him climb inside.

Eris appeared inside the artillery room immediately after in a puff of smoke, her once soundstone-filled bag empty.

“Delivery completed and on time,” Eris boasted proudly. “We at Arcane Abbey Deliveries hope you’ll be satisfied with our service!”

“Why do you think you keep having repeat customers?” I teased her back, though jokes hardly helped alleviate the tension in my heart. The die was cast.

“I wonder what you have in mind, handsome,” Eris replied. Neferoa and I had recorded the soundstones’ contents in secret specifically to avoid Daltia eavesdropping on it by accident. “Do you intend for the people of this land to take up arms and overrun the mountain?”

“Something like that,” I replied evasively. “If all goes well, we can listen to a recording after the battle is over.”

Eris scoffed. “And if we aren’t lucky?”

“Then we’ll hear it in real-time.” The Colmar’s alarm rang across the airship the moment I finished my sentence, signaling the start of our troubles. “Here they come.”

“Demons!” Marika shouted over the speakers. “I need someone on the deck!”

“That’s my cue,” Eris said, her staff radiating power as she looked at me with a grim gaze of concern. “Don’t die on me, Robin. I’ve buried too many friends.”

As always, it fell on me to lighten up her mood. “Only if you give me something to live for.”

“Fine.” A thin smile spread across her face. “That’s a bargain I can live with.”

She pressed her lips against mine. Her kiss was quick, clumsy, and hesitant, with little confidence and much anxiety; but it was raw and true. Like all good things, it ended way too soon when Eris teleported away.

“Ewww,” I heard Beni complain from inside Ravengarde.

“You’ll get it one day,” I promised him as I slid open the wooden panels and allowed our cannons to stick outside of the hull. Mist flooded into our ship and I saw screaming shadows coming at us from within its depths.

I started blasting.

Soraseo entered the den of evil in her country’s uniform.

It had been so long since she last wore a common officer’s lacquered armor rather than her crimson one. Father forced her to earn that particular equipment through grueling training. Her current outfit lacked the essence-enhanced capabilities of the other. It made her feel naked as she walked through the incised mine passageways leading into the heart of Mount Kazandu.

She remembered the few times she visited the mountain in the past. The air had seemed so pure back then, even within its deepest tunnels, but it now choked with putrid essence even more intense than a Blight’s heart. She could smell its vile stench through the pieces of her helmet covering her mouth and its influence warped the very fabric of reality around them. The walls glowed with golden and silvery hues, as if the stone had suddenly transformed into precious metals. The heat only continued to increase the further her group progressed inside the volcano, with crimson runestones engraved into the walls providing a flicker of twisted light.

Evil permeated Soraseo’s flesh and bones, trying to find a way in. Her mark burned her skin beneath her armor as the power within recoiled from the intense corruption around them. It shielded her mind as it did when she fought across many Blights, but she hadn’t sensed such an oppressive aura in the air since the City of Wrath.

She and her hero allies escorted Lord Oboro into the tunnel, all of them armed and armored to the teeth. Her teacher only carried his ceremonial sword and, true to his teachings, refused to draw it even when robed cultists came to greet him at Mount Kazandu. He didn’t need to. Cunning words had earned him a place of honor among the vipers.

“I must confess my utmost surprise, honorable Lord Oboro,” their cultist guide said, a small group of his fellow witchcrafters escorting their group into the volcano’s heart. “I wasn’t informed you were one of us.”

“Our masters believed it wiser that I keep my true allegiances hidden from friends and foes alike so that I could sow the seeds of discontentment in Seukaia undetected,” Lord Oboro replied with such calm confidence that he sounded utterly believable, though he had to wipe some sweat off his brow. The corrupt essence in the air weighed on his soul in spite of his training. “I could not miss our greatest triumph.”

Rubenzo had coached Lord Oboro on the Knots’ secret messages which he had stolen from cultists Chronius and Lady Mersie captured in Goldport. Her teacher had quickly adapted to the deception and played his role well.

Too well.

Soraseo was sure of it now. Tiny details had only confirmed her gut feeling and worst fears. She sent a glance to her allies among the guards, her hand resting on her sword’s pommel. The secret message passed between them.

They were all walking right into a trap; one that they would have to turn against the hunter if they hoped to survive.

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“This essence in the air…” Lord Oboro choked, his throat dry from the heat. “Have you begun the ceremony already?”

“It began seven hours ago,” their cultist guide replied gleefully, while a song echoed deeper into the cavern. “You have joined us just in time for the finish.”

Soraseo’s jaw clenched on its own. Time was running out.

She saw light at the tunnel’s end, and their long journey into the mountain’s depths ended in a great conical cavern dug into the very mouth of Mount Kazandu. Crimson, bloodsoaked mist swirled in the sky above the stone like a spiraling cloud. As her group entered this chamber, Soraseo’s eyes were drawn to a golden gleam at its center. Her eyes widened in shock once they acclimated to the lighting.

An island of gold melted into a pool of magma.

A towering hill of thousands, if not millions of Devil Coins floated on a steaming pit of lava dug into a ring of molten runestones. The mountain of riches gleamed like the heart of the sun in the light of the molten earth, the gilded Soulforged Adamantine making up their structure merging together into a fluctuating shape like a shimmering mirage while their countless ruby eyes flickered with malevolence. Their wicked essence swirling in the air, twisting the mists in the form of floating skulls and golden clouds.

Soulforged Adamantine was supposed to be indestructible, yet the Devil Coins had begun to melt together.

The sheer quantity of them boggled Soraseo’s mind, and their blinding shine hurt her eyes. This tribute to human greed put that of her country’s to shame. Did all of these coins contain a stolen soul harvested over seven hundred years of demonic deals and corruption? Even if a fraction of them alone held captured spirits, this hoard likely included an entire kingdom’s worth of victims.

And more it would claim still.

Dozens of Shinkokan women surrounded the monstrous pit, their hands bound to the runestone ring by thick metal chains. Many of them screamed and wept from the heated metal searing their skin, pleading with guards and cultists to no avail while their tears turned to steam on their cheeks. All of them had a passing resemblance to Soraseo’s true face, much to her sorrow.

Those poor souls had been taken to suffer in her place.

Dozens of hooded cultists scuttled about on the stone floor around the pool, most of them singing in ancient Erebian around the hill of coins. Two demons—a tri-faced gargoyle of solid silver and a colossal, monstrous purple fly with a human face and torso—prayed to an immense marble statue of the Goddess sitting on a golden throne far to the chamber’s rear.

No… the Goddess was always represented with a mask and this woman was bare-faced. Her traits sharply reminded Soraseo of Eris, albeit with an expression of condescending pride rather than mischief. The fair creature had furled great wings, a golden laurel crown, and a scroll folded in her hands. This had to be the Devil of Greed.

Doggotaro was sitting on her lap.

Soraseo’s heart skipped a beat in her chest. As the Monk, she had grown used to noticing countless tiny details that she would have ignored before; and the ragged, pale face of her brother filled her with shame and concern. Though dressed in the jade robes of an emperor, he seemed to have aged years since they last met; some of his hair had gone white, and his bloodshot eyes staring at the captive women with visceral fear. Soraseo recognized that look all too well.

Her brother looked the same the night when she murdered their mother before his eyes.

It took all of her willpower not to freeze in place. Instead, Soraseo lowered her gaze and eyed Lord Oboro in an attempt to ground herself back into the present. Her teacher’s attention was wholly focused on her brother too, or at least it seemed at first glance. His gaze instead turned to the statue on which he sat, a brief emotion passing over his face.

A thin smile full of condescension.

Lord Oboro quickly hid it with a bow. “The lava is rising, Your Majesty,” he said without emotion. “Is there no safer place for you to be?”

Soraseo and her allies had noticed it too. The lava threatened to overflow and drown the captive women in a tide of molten fire as the coins continued to sink into the magma. Their blood would meld with the gilded Soulforged Adamantine and serve as the foundation of their killer’s Crown of Desire. Soraseo’s allies exchanged a look with her, with all of them thinking about how to save these hostages without arousing suspicion.

For a moment, Soraseo thought her brother hadn’t listened. Doggotaro then stirred on the statue’s lap, his hands grasping at his imperial robes.

“She has to die,” he said with empty eyes.

The venomous fear in his voice hit Soraseo harder than the sting of Belgoroth’s sword. When he looked at the captive women, her brother only saw her bloodstained face. The vile essence of this place had clouded his mind.

“Your mother shall be returned to you soon, oh wise emperor, by the will of the Goddess returned,” their cultist guide announced. “The daughter’s blood shall pay for the empress’ safe rebirth among the living.”

Lies. Soraseo’s hand gripped her sword pommel with all of her strength. Demons lie, always.

She had to save him, to drag him out of this cursed place alive and well. Only then would she beg for his forgiveness at her feet and face her judgment without regrets.

A distant detonation shook her out of her thoughts.

It was distant, a booming echo from high above, hardly louder than far away thunder, but both she and Lord Oboro managed to hear it over the cultists' song.

Robin.

“Intruders?” her teacher asked with a look of false concern.

“Too little, too late,” the cultist guide declared, his hands joined. “The promised time has come!”

The hooded men sang louder than ever, and the hill of gold appeared to vibrate in response to their prayers. The coins flickered and undulated, their gleaming substance merging together into a gilded mountain of white-hot blinding light. A little lava began to spill out of the ring containing the pit and nearly melted a screaming captive alive.

Soraseo tensed up, as did her allies. The essence in the air thickened until it became unbearable and suffocating. Crimson, skull-shaped steam arose from the golden hill; Soraseo had no idea how long it would take for the coins to merge together into a Devil’s Crown, but she knew the process was fast underway.

Then she felt it.

That familiar sensation of recognizing a fellow Hero.

Her eyes immediately pinpointed its source: a duo of hooded cultists singing in front of the statue, their backs turned on Soraseo’s group. Her power granted her enough understanding of motion and body language to recognize Chronius among them. How had he managed to infiltrate the gathering?

If so, then his other companion had to be–

“Now,” Soraseo heard the disguised Rubenzo whisper at her side, uttering the signal.

She reacted instantly, knowing that hesitation would spell their doom.

Soraseo drew her weapon faster than the wind and turned her blade on her teacher.

Her power caught a glimpse of his genuine surprise written all over his face, while Rubenzo’s hand moved to grab him from behind and Lady Mersie grabbed daggers hidden under her armor. The entire sneak attack took place in the span of a second.

If Soraseo had miscalculated, she would stop within an inch of Lord Oboro’s neck before she could land a killing blow. Part of her hoped that she had been mistaken, that her instincts had deceived her.

The thing wearing her teacher’s face caught her sword in midair at inhuman speed.

Soraseo’s hand immediately became lighter, her sword teleporting straight into Lord Oboro’s palm. His body’s limbs and neck then twisted in an unnatural way, the joints snapping like twigs like a ragdoll. Rubenzo’s hand barely missed its chest by an inch.

Soraseo’s heart sank in her chest. She barely had time to see the ghastly smile stretching on her teacher’s humorless face and hear the two words he whispered under his breath.

“Good try,” he said.

The Shadow of Envy slipped through their grasp and ran straight for the Devil of Greed’s treasure.

The room erupted into screams of chaos and confusion in an instant. The impostor wearing Lord Oboro’s face threw the stolen sword at Mersie with inhuman strength before she could retaliate with knives of her own, forcing her to dodge. By the time Soraseo and Rubenzo raced after him, the Shadow was already shedding their disguise and running on all fours. Their limbs stretched out into long and thin stick-like appendages with too many joints.

Their cultist guide had the misfortune of standing in the Shadow’s way; he barely had time to open his mouth and shout a warning before ‘Lord Oboro’ pushed them aside with an elongated arm. The Knot member’s body immediately turned to dust in the blink of an eye as all their years of life were stolen from them.

The Shadow didn’t slow down, their attention was entirely focused on the hoard of souls they sought to steal for themselves.

Soraseo cursed her slowness as she picked her sword off the ground. She should have struck earlier. She had had a gut feeling something was wrong when her teacher had so readily agreed to help them. Lord Oboro always argued that a true swordsman knew when to unsheathe his sword, and he never did anything without cautious consideration. The real one would have investigated Soraseo’s story and delayed before giving anything more than information.

He had been simply too eager to act decisively. His reluctance to discuss the adamantine mask—whose details he likely shared because the Heroes could have easily confirmed the story and earned their distrust otherwise—had only confirmed her suspicions.

The impostor must have murdered or even stolen him a mere few hours before their visit.

Her teacher would be avenged.

Chronius turned around with daggers in his hands while his hooded ally—who had to be the Spy—threw runestones hidden inside their sleeves into the magma pool. An enormous burst of icy essence erupted from it instantly and unleashed a cloud of steam across the chamber that swallowed panicked cultists, angry demons, and hostages alike. A thick mountain of ice swallowed the coins and plugged up the magma pit before it could overflow.

Chronius threw a volley of knives with lethal accuracy. Dozens of projectiles flew across the air, each of them nailing a cultist’s head or a demon’s eye. The Shadow alone dodged them easily enough, their Archer power granting them inhuman accuracy and reflexes. Yet when their elongated arm reached for the Devil Coins, they found a thick wall of ice in the way. Their inhuman screech of frustration echoed with hundreds of voices, while their mouth stretched into a maw filled with fingers and eyes. Their body began to undergo an even ghastlier transformation as melting ice shrouded the chamber in thick mist.

Undeterred, and with her power allowing her to pinpoint its movements, Soraseo prepared to charge after the abomination with her sword when her brother’s scream reached her ears. The danger of the Shadow, the ritual, and the threat of Knots and demons alike faded from her mind as her head snapped in Doggotaro’s direction.

Her brother stared at her with abject fear, while the statue’s hands had moved to seize him like a mother with her child.

The Devil of Greed’s marble lips had stretched into a smile.